3D tracking of soccer players using time-situation graph in monocular image sequence

In this paper, we propose a new method to track players using 3D particle filter guided by the time-situation graph in order to perform players tracking robust to occlusion in a soccer image sequence. In the conventional method using particle filter, there is a deficit that it is difficult to discover the players again once they are lost in an image sequence. Thus, we represents the position information of two or more players as the time-situation graph beforehand. Then, by running particle filter guided by this graph, the incorrect detection of players can be greatly reduced and the players be robustly tracked even when occlusion occurs. As a result, the tracking accuracy was improved by 7.15 points in comparison with the conventional method.